


Follow the Rhinestones

by spacemagic



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No War, Angst, Blink and you'll miss it Bakoda mention (hell yeah), Coming Out, F/F, First Kiss, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Katara (Avatar), Past Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29261379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemagic/pseuds/spacemagic
Summary: Katara does not like the Fire Nation. Katara is here for exactly one purpose – to help Aang master his waterbending while he learns to bend all four elements - and is not interested in the beach, the boardwalk, the blue skies, the glittering city lights. Katara certainly does not like the fact that she has been stuck on Ember Island for an entire *year*.Then she kisses a girl. It changes everything.[For Winter ATLA Femslash Week. Day 1: First Kiss]
Relationships: Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Ty Lee (Avatar)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16
Collections: Winter ATLA Femslash Week 2021





	Follow the Rhinestones

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** homophobia/internalised homophobia and background alcohol/drugs. Katara is about eighteen or nineteen years old in this piece.
> 
> Internalised homophobia is a core theme of this piece, and in some respects it is about this more than it is shipping. I am aware that understanding sexuality as a facet of identity is something that was brought into the touchstones (Japan, China, and Thailand, largely) behind the Fire Nation through western contact and westernisation, and modern homophobia in these places is partially in place because of the adoption of western understandings of gender/sexuality. However, I do feel that there is a good argument for using ATLA to discuss how imperialism and homophobia intersect given that in the source text, homophobia does exist in the Fire Nation - and although it's clumsily implied in the comics, I do think Zuko's arc in the show speaks to a lot of gay and trans experiences about familial acceptance and forging your own path, and I believe that understanding that there is homophoba & transphobia in the Fire Nation can enrich his arc. In other respects, I've tried not to westernise Ember Island too much despite the modernised setting, and I've taken pains to imply that the SWT doesn't have the same approach to sexuality.
> 
> Thanks as always to [Cole](https://cbrickell.bandcamp.com/) for proofreading for me.

The Fire Nation is beautiful, like the spread inside of a glossy magazine. 

_ “Anyway, I think you’ll love it here! There’s lots of–” _

Soft white sands.

_ “–have to try these moon peaches, at the market they sell these huge ones–”  _

Clear blue skies.

_ “–and there’s this jumbo arcade, the size of–”  _

Grand beach houses with thick mahogany doors and topped with ornate red-tiled roofs and a long, long veranda that could fit a parade of circus animals and a competition-ratified swimming pool and a deluxe stereo system that someone had wired up around priceless tapestries and a crowd of teens who’d climbed down their matching balconies, wearing a flash of gold on every wrist and ankle, snapping their fingers to summon a bonfire that could burn the last of their cares away, and still, there’d be room to laze by the shore.

_ “—and you’ll love the beach!” _

_ Static. A deep breath. _

A warm breeze blows through your loose hair, as the sun pinkens and the sky purples, not like a bruise but more like expensive silk (but you think of bruises anyway), and then stars all come out, twinkling, and you wonder, rhinestones or diamonds? You sit and watch the sky glitter with sand between your toes as a distant roar of a summertime party blazes behind you, from the grand villa that had once belonged to a Fire Lord. Deposed, now. You imagine him toppling into the ocean from a cliff face that had been professionally sculpted for a photoshoot, and it makes you smile.

_“Katara? Are you–” Static. “–still–”_ _Static. “–connection–”_

You listen to the rustle of the sea, sweeping in, soft, constant, a gentle hiss as they cut across the sands, and feel something like a wound begin to open again, in your chest with each push of the tide.

_ The signal was patchy. Another sign he was far, far away. His voice had been criss-crossing, cutting out and in and out again over the phone, the audio chopped into little pieces she just had to tape together by hand. _

"Do you really like it here?" you ask the girl next to you, suddenly, as you lace and unlace your fingers in the water.

_ She thought she heard her name. She couldn’t tell.  _

She laughs – gives you this cute little giggle-snort at the question, and tosses her braid to one side. When she turns to you, you can see she hasn’t evened out her smile into something symmetrical. 

“No, actually,” she says, grinning wide. She leans forward, an idle hand on her chin, and there’s a smudge of pink from her lips that’s spilled over the side of her mouth. “No, I don’t.”

_ “Yeah. Yeah, Aang. I’m here.”  _

“Oh,” is all you can say to that.

_ There was a space.  _

You want to lean in.

_ The static itched like little knives. _

The moon is full and the whole world feels kissed with silver even as it smells too much like smoke. You should lean in. 

_She listened to it cut her up for just a moment before_ _she spoke._

It's such a beautiful night.

_ “I think It sounds wonderful, Aang.”  _

You wonder what pink tastes like.

_ She didn’t know if he could still hear. _

You lean in.

_ “I'm sure I'll love it,” she said, quietly. _

You keep leaning in.

* * *

The next day, she rises as the birds caw. 

_ She pulled away, a bit like the tide, a bit too quickly, and it left you wanting. _

_ “Have you kissed girls before?” she’d asked you, with a grin. _

Her head is clear as the daybreak: she hadn’t drunk a thing last night. It would have been easy, easy to blame it on the beach, cluttered with plastic cups, or the silver twinkle of the stars, if she hadn't remembered. Blame it on anything but her own lips, anything but her back arching forwards to lean closer (to her).

_ Your cheeks stung red. You’d wanted to pout, but then you remembered a pretty girl was sitting in your lap, her little finger running along your jaw.  _

_ “I've not kissed  _ anyone _ before,” you had told her. “Why? Does it matter?” _

The sea here deceives. It’s a pretty cerulean blue that glimmers under the hot sun, cool enough to coax you in, deep when you might think it shallow and sparkling, immense with hidden currents that seethe and broil and swallow you up without a sound. It draws you in deep and drinks you whole.

_ She didn't answer your question with anything but laughter and a gentle kiss to where your face had flushed. _

_ “You're so silly,” she began, and the words slid into a whisper of a language you didn’t know more than a few fumbling phrases of, faded into dialect you're just beginning to learn: a long, slow kiss. _

The Fire Nation is  _ beautiful _ and she only realised that when her toes first touched the water, and realised she could drown a thousand times, effortlessly. She wonders whether it will devour her, or whether, instead, she’ll tame it first. She wants to wrestle all that  _ pull _ into her hands, hold it, seize it – or at least, she had, until she remembers a noticeboard cluttered with lifeguard warnings and missing persons posters. 

_ “Maybe we’ll see each other again,” you tell her, squeezed into the breath you had to draw (didn’t want to draw). _

She feels a twist of guilt. But it’ll only last a moment. 

_ She shakes her head with a smile still stuck on her face. _

What she expects to be left after she lets the water fall away is just brine and bitterness.

_ “I’m not planning on staying for long,” she tells you, as she leans in and cups your ear. “I never do, really.” _

Brine and bitterness.

_ Her voice becomes something quiet. _

In her reflection, there’s still pink on her lips. 

_ “I think it’s easier, when it never lasts.”  _

You speak until the sun rises, and it becomes something to hide.

* * *

You spent all of the next day looking at your reflection in a teacup.

_ “You’re upset.” _

It bothered you.

_ He glares at her, as he says this, as if that’s supposed to make her feel better.  _

Your first kiss was not supposed to be at a secret Ember Island beach party that you weren’t invited to, in braids and bright sequins and slathered in make-up but not enough blue. 

_ She sits red-eyed, cross-legged on a too-thin tatami mat, crushed in between the corridors above a busy tea house she’d crashed out in, in a room without windows and wind-chimes and water-fountains and temple gardens.  _

_ It’s stuffy. Hot. Thirty-five degrees, no air conditioning (when she asks, he just snorts. Terrible customer service here). She supposes she should sit up properly, under this auspicious roof belonging to an auspicious name, but her shins are red and itchy from kneeling on the sages’ tiled floors for too long. So she slumps. _

Your first kiss was supposed to be stumbling and hesitant and a bit gross, with a boy, medium-tall, appearance TBA, in a quiet place as pretty as it was nondescript. 

_ He doesn’t comment – only keeps his gaze on her. Maybe he’s waiting for a response. He’s standing by the door, and towers over her at the very intimidating height of a hundred and sixty centimetres. She wonders if she glared back, she could make him twitch. Perhaps looks can’t kill, but at least, she could see if they could cause minor stab wounds. _

You know, in your gut, you would have resented that him, that faceless boy, medium tall, for taking your first from you.

_ He holds her glare for exactly thirty seconds before choking.  _

You’d have wanted to claw his heart out. 

_ “Oh, come on Katara!” He’d thrown his hands up, in frustration. “At least  _ work _ with me here! You know Aang can barely sit still right now, he knows that  _ something _ is up, he’s about five seconds away from –” _

_ “From what, Zuko?” _

_ He shuts his mouth like an automatic lock. _

You think about the possibility of BBQ boy heart, on a little skewer with roasted pineapple and plantain, with a good heaping of salt. 

You laugh. You shudder. You feel something die, but you can’t name it. Brine and bitterness.

_ “You know,” she says, after a pause.“I really  _ don’t _ know why Aang is fretting. I'm perfectly fine here.” _

_ “Katara,” he warns. “You know why.” _

The thing is, you don't want to hurt  _ him _ . You couldn't bring yourself to hurt him, not after he'd grasped your hand and shown you every dizzying mountain and every open sky with wide eyes and a wider smile. You’re still fond of those memories. You’ll always love him, you told yourself, and it’s true, and it isn’t.

_ “Well, it doesn't matter! I can go where I like! I’m not  _ his _.”  _

_ “I know you’re not – I never said you were – I’m just – ugh!" _

You aren’t sweethearts. Not anymore. You don’t dream of kissing storm-eyed boys with curling tattoos (and maybe she’d never dreamed of kissing storm-eyed boys with intricate tattoos, not as much as skies and mountains and the width of an empty landscape). You aren’t anything, now – you haven’t put a label on what comes next, in that space, in that static that cuts through a long distance phone call when you aren't stuck to each other's side along with mosquitoes and summer heat.

_ "I’m bad about this. Just – forget about Aang. Forget I said anything about Aang! Okay?”  _

_ You close your eyes for a moment. Zuko's mumbling something unbearably rude like “I can’t believe you made me cover for you,” without moving his teeth, somehow. You ignore his mutterings, barely catching an "Uncle" and a "girl" and a "won't hear the end of it" in a string of self-pity that you tune out. _

_ Instead you listen to the window. You can hear so many birds squawk and preen from up here, even in this first floor apartment boxed in the city a half mile from the boardwalk full of buskers and wind-up circus music from merry-go-rounds and all the plinks and plonks and woop-woop-woops from the arcades, and after half a minute, you wonder if tropical birds really are so ill-fitting. You can almost hear the plastic and the neon in their caws. It’s nothing like the solemn call of a hawk-owl that might glide above snow-capped forests back home. _

_ “Okay,” you say. “We won't talk about Aang.” _

It'd be easier, you think, to look into the water with pink still on your lips, if it was simply about a boy. The distinction between just a boy and a girl matters, in the Fire Nation.

_ When she opens her eyes, it appears that he has slumped – again, that’s the only word for it, for how weird and graceless it is – down on the floor too. Sitting at some awkward angle instead of poised properly on his knees – it annoys you, actually, how difficult it is to imagine him the prince he could have been, and how he looks more like himself in an apron than a crown, as much as it comforts you.  _

_ “Katara. Come on. Something's not right.”  _

_ He's looking at you square in the eye at your level, but it’s not scornful, this time. He might even be trying to be nice. _

_ “What happened?" _

You’d slipped out at night. You’d wanted to see what the buzz was all about. You’d gone to catch a look at tasteless marble interiors that you were supposed to hate. You’d found home-made lights, bodies dancing, homemade tropical punch five times too strong sloshing in plastic cups, cheap body glitter and strong perfume and taped on feathers and costumes and hands the same size, silhouettes the same height, hair tangled up in each other, and you didn’t hate it.

_ “I'm serious. You know I can’t help you if you don’t say anything, Katara.” _

You’d gone as a fellow tribeswoman, as if to save a piece of yourself: you, as a singer-songwriter whose instruments were covered in peeling stickers and costumes were on the wrong side of cheap when they’d broken through to Ba Sing Se market, who'd beaded blue with other colours the moment their single hit the radio. You laughed and danced like you somehow belonged in this mess. 

_ There is a long space where neither of you spoke. His face crumples first. _

_ “Hey – listen. I’m… I’m sure it’ll be okay.” _

_ He’s wrong, but when he holds out his hand, she takes it.  _

Nobody recognised you. Nobody here had her poster slapped on the wall since you were twelve, her signed demo CD stashed in your drawer at fourteen, the 8-bit refrain of her number six top single set as your ringtone for an entire shameless year at sixteen. To them, it just meant braids and bright sequins and slathered in make-up – some, but not enough blue. A costume.

_She leaned on his shoulder. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this: he had irritatingly comfortable shoulders for the sifu equivalent of a drowned snapping-turtle-rat that Aang had found only Tui and La_ _know where. That’s the last time she’ll ever zip back home with next to no notice – next time her Dad wants to announce last minute that he’s going to tie the knot with his best friend of thirty-nine years, she’s telling him no thank you, Aang’ll bring home yet another descendant of the last Fire Lord, the one who tried to turn his people to ash and hers into smoke, and it really doesn’t need to be more awkward, a break-up that they refuse to talk about is really enough, thank you. Sue her, dhe clings onto Zuko's stupid, awkward shoulder. Maybe she knows it isn't really Zuko's fault – whatever dazzling inheritance of stolen riches he'd been owed, he'd decided to forgo it to be a part-time tea server part-time firebending master, mumbling something about his father, his uncle, and then Yangchen of all people as a justification – that last one being something that Aang loved to remind her of instead of actually getting angry for once._

_ She begins to cry into his stupid shoulder. _

You'd fully intended to hate the Fire Nation. You found it easy to loathe, at first – it had been as beautiful as a glossy magazine cover. You would treat it, and all its ridiculously manicured tropical courtyard gardens, its twelve dozen forms of formal address that convey all forms of repressed military formality without the slightest touch of tenderness, its sneering magistrates and their assistants and those assistants' assistants, grinding themselves to the ground with twelve-hour work days and fancy midday luncheons in forty degree heat, all of it, as exactly as ridiculous as it was supposed to be.

_ He lets you cry. _

You’d gone as a joke. You'd needed something to laugh at that you couldn’t see in a mirror. 

_ He lets you cry as long as you need. _

You’d danced to music that made your ears bleed for how bland and colourful it was at once, and you'd tried exactly one sip of punch and spat it straight out into a gold-trimmed plant pot and thrown the rest into the pool. You’d laughed, as recklessly as everyone else did here, who were burning the last of their cares away.

_ “Katara?” he asks, after a while. “I think I’ve lost feeling in my – yeah.” _

You’d tried exactly one drink of a girl, and you’d leaned in.

_ She rips away and turns to look at him, to meet him exactly in the eye. _

You’d kept leaning in. You were hungry for another.

_ “I went to a party last night and then I kissed a girl. And I want to do it again.” _

Your first kiss was with a girl in pink on a silver beach beneath stars whose names were woven into stories of hunters and kayaks and crossing oceans and it was  _ beautiful _ , and it shouldn’t have bothered you. 

_ His eyes are wide, and he’s smiling – and it looks so wrong and twisted on him, and you wish you could tear it off his face, because it looks sincere – “That’s incredible, really, I’m so happy for you–” _

It shouldn’t have bothered you. You come from a place where the sky is not labelled one colour in a brochure but allowed to be bronze and white and grey and even, sometimes blue, and there is not a name for the women who kiss each other’s brows tenderly and make each other parkas from the seal they have hunted and skinned and sown, each stitch holding a prayer – except, maybe, you could call them  _ lovers _ . 

_ “It’s not incredible,” you snap. _

You’ve seen no such things out in the open in the Fire Nation. Only behind closed doors and in costumes with more bright colours than you could imagine.

_ “I don’t know why I did it.” _

You don’t know when it started bothering you.

_ “I wish I hadn’t done it.” _

Somehow, you’d taken all this second-hand shame on, even as you knew it was all farce and ceremony, something to be laughed at: and you couldn’t carry that back home, you didn’t want them to know how much this place made you hate and hurt. Somehow, this place had sunk its claws into you. 

_ He pulls her hands into his and looks at her with so much sincerity that she thinks he’s about to burst. _

You hate it so much.

_ “It’ll be okay, Katara. It’ll be okay, I promise.” _

You hate it so much that you want to tear the stars from the sky. 

That wasn’t why you told Zuko, though. Really, you could have told Aang. You’d known Aang for as long as you’d been away from home, and sailed under so many skies with him, seen every corner of the four nations and had thought your lives would always be entwined (and they would – it’d just be different now). He would have understood. The thing people always forget about Aang is how well he understands pain. He would have listened softly, and said the right things, and let the wound breathe as much as it needed, and helped you let go when needs must. It wouldn’t have been so hard to take the rickety tram ride up to the temple steps and explain directly to him how you’d snuck in those secret ragers in those vacant houses for vacant people, had danced, had cried, hadn’t gotten utterly wasted, and had still managed to kiss a girl on the beach with the sea soft between her toes, and it felt better than anything, even if the sky was full of rhinestones and the sands were just plastic. It wouldn’t have cost you more than a handful of change to say. It would have even felt good.

_ “It’s okay,” he repeats. “You’re okay. You’re fine – it’s normal and natural and fine and fuck what people say about it, it’s really okay, I promise–” _

_ “It doesn’t  _ feel  _ okay, Zuko. I don’t feel okay.” _

The reason you told him first, and not Aang, wasn’t because you thought there was a chance Zuko might better understand, from the other side of the looking-glass, what it meant to have the Fire Nation sink its claws into you. 

_ He’s quiet for a moment. _

_ “I feel like the inside of a trash compactor,” she says. _

_ He holds her hands so gently. _

It was simpler than that. You didn’t want to see Aang, looking at you, trying to slither away from your own shame. You didn’t want to see Aang, who’d let it all out into the water, and wash away. 

_ “They’re wrong. Listen. They were wrong about  _ me _ and they’re wrong about _ you _ and they’re wrong about everyone else in the fucking world.” _

You wanted to see Zuko and feel stuck. You wanted to feel like something loathsome.

_ He’s pulled her into a big clumsy hug, and has wrapped her in his arms, while all she wants to do is howl and howl and howl until all that are left are snapped vocal chords. _

You spent the whole day looking at your reflection in a tea-cup, wondering if you could wash away not only the pink on your lips, but the whole of your mouth.

_ “This is how they break us,” he tells her. “We’re not letting them break us.” _

You splash water on your face. The pink washes down the drain, and for a moment you wonder if she’s right – you wonder if it’s better if these things never last – even though the thought makes you want to tear the enamel of the sink away, to get that trace of colour back.

_ “We’re going to make them fight for it.” _

You take a small plastic container filled with a borrowed, bright blue from a shelf full of stage make-up and shaving cream, and dip your fingers in it. It is really just  _ typical  _ that the descendent of a war-mongering tyrant has leant you lipstick like it is some kind of war paint, and you would roll your eyes, were it not such a pretty colour on you. 

_ “I really think you’ll actually really like Zuko,” Aang had said, all those months ago, across a jittery trans-continental phone line. “He’ll surprise you, you know.” _

You really think it really is annoying how Aang is almost always right about these things.

* * *

  
  


You were leaving for some air, you’d said, but you really wanted to hear the sea rustle and see the stars twinkle again like rhinestones. So you walked through a cloud of smoke and stained-teeth laughter out the back entrance of a concrete building that held community youth centre classes twice a week, in borrowed sandals that didn’t quite fit, but you’d liked their shape anyway, even if you stumbled like a baby caribou-seal in them – that clacked along the cracked pavement. All the way down to the boardwalk.

You’d maybe just been to the best party of your life. You’d remember it in hazy snapshots. You’d think of words _fluorescent_ and _cheap_ and _loud_ and _glue-gun feathers_ and _glitter_ and _groove,_ the smooth way the bass did, and _clink,_ like the clink of glass as they raised a glass you weren’t drinking to you, _clatter,_ like her footsteps, as you fell into step with the girl who you’d been dancing with, _polystyrene,_ and that was what her skirt was made of, _shiver_ , that was when her nails brushed along your bare arm, just a touch, a moment, before you spun away–

_ It’s easier when it doesn’t last. _

Your lips are still painted blue. Three, four years from now, you’d look at fuzzy photos from this night where you could practically smell the sweat on them, with half the sequins had fallen off your dress, your hair in a mess, falling out of place, all those purple flowers Zuko had grumpily braided into your hair beginning to shed their petals as your arm was hooked around his still-awkward and annoyingly comfortable shoulder, grinning at the girl taking the photo, who’d kissed glitter on your cheeks moments before. 

It would strike you later that it was the only thing that hadn’t smeared away. That bright blue paint.

You’re too giddy, though, to think about what a state you appear to be, and pull off your shoes as you reach the boardwalk, before they rub too much against your heels – you think you’ll never wear anything so ridiculous again. Maybe you’ll toss them into the ocean. You pass along this strip of pink lanterns and fire dancers and arcade games and pop-up stalls selling candied nuts, which you’re currently shovelling down your mouth, not thinking about reflections and mirrors and the scores of people passing by and anything but the soreness of your toes and the crunch in your mouth and the salt in the breeze –

_ “Wait, Katara?” _

You didn’t catch her, at first. You’d waltzed past a whole troupe of circus performers stuck in theoretically impossible positions when she’d slinked out of form to call out your name. You hadn’t heard anything but noise, background static, not even with how colourful her voice was. 

_ “Katara? That’s not... you, is it? Wait–” _

You’d been walking towards the ocean. You’d been drawn towards that long call of the deep, of the waters beyond the shallows, and you’d gotten as far as wet sand between your toes. 

“No  _ way _ ,” she says, the grin spreading across her face. You can almost hear her breath stop. “Katara. It really  _ is _ you.”

That’s where she touched your hand. As you stood on the beach, bright lights leaving long shadows in between pinks and purple.

You turn to look at her. Soft skin and dimpled cheeks and pink lips, which every corner of is covered in surprise. Perhaps even a touch of joy.

“I’m still mad at you,” you tell her, curtly.

She cocks her head to the left. “Wait – you’re mad at me? I don’t understand.”

Her fingers, nails painted a pale pink, are still wrapped around your hand gently. You could pull away with a flick of your wrist. You could draw away, soft as the tide.

“You said you wanted nothing to do with me. It’s  _ easier _ , after all, when it never lasts.”

You can almost feel her breath catch. 

“No – wait – Katara, I meant – it was just...”

“Just a kiss. Yeah, I get it,  _ I know _ . You made that clear.”

She looks at you open mouthed, but the words don’t come out. 

Perhaps this is the point where you should pull away. You should pull away, as the water rushes past your toes, as the tide sinks in. 

(But you want to draw it closer. It feels safer when the water is closer)

“Is it bad that I want it to be more?” you ask.

She looks at you so softly. 

“No…” she says, slowly. “No, I don’t think it’s bad. I don’t think it’s bad at all.”

You’d thought, before you came here, that everything about the Fire Nation would be so bright and gaudy and tasteless that you’d want to shield your eyes, but you know in the quiet of the sages’ temple, that candles can be soft too. She looks at you like a steady candle, as a breeze blows gentle behind you and the water washes your feet.

“There’s a but, in that sentence somewhere.”

Her eyes crinkle, even though she doesn’t smile.

“The wind is blowing in another direction,” she says. “Can you feel it?”

You take a moment to think, to feel it on your skin. It’s almost distracting, the water tickling your feet and her fingers delicate at your wrist.

“I think that’s where the universe is telling me to go,” she says. “Somewhere else.”

You nod, the thought feeling heavy.

“And you know, it’s such a shame,” she says, looking into your eyes. “It’s a shame I can’t stay. It’s just so pretty here.”

“Yeah. It’s beautiful.”

The Fire Nation is beautiful, and you wonder if it is done breaking you.

“You know,” she says, her tone off-hand, but her eyes still on yours. “I used to have nightmares about the beach.”

You feel your eyebrows raise half way off your face. 

_ “Nightmares?” _

“Yeah, nightmares,” she says, with a little chuckle. “I used to think they made sand in big bags in a shiny factory, and somehow, in these dreams I’d accidentally fall down the wrong factory chute and get ground up in the machine, and all that would be left of me would be teeny tiny pieces, stuffed in a sandbag. They’d load me up on a truck, packed in with a bunch of identical sandbags, and ship this bag of me all the way to an empty beach, and spill me out with the rest.”

“That sounds  _ awful _ .”

She shrugs. “I think what really got me, was this image of someone looking for me – someone on their knees, with a magnifying glass, trying to pluck me from all these teeny tiny grains of sand, and struggling to tell the difference. They never could tell the difference.” 

Your fingers curl up, and touch where hers rest on your wrist. 

“They never seemed to have a face,” she says, idly. “I don’t know why.” 

The tide comes in closer, and washes against your bare ankles now. Your fingers are entwined.

“I’m thinking of leaving too,” you tell her.

Her smile widens. She leans closer. Not on you – never on you, never quite touching, but close enough, that it would just take a tilt of your chin to close the distance.

“Oh yeah?” she says, and it’s almost a whisper on her breath. “Whereabouts?”

“I… don’t know yet. Far away. I’m not ready to go home yet, but…” Home. The thought of your brother and your dad and your  _ gran-gran  _ knowing what you’d done, when it still felt like welt, red and sore and shameful, something that shouldn’t bother you (and probably wouldn’t mean a thing to them) makes your insides twist. Besides, there’s still so much to  _ see _ out here. You know you’ll go home, eventually. Just not now. “... I just want to be somewhere that  _ definitely _ isn’t here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I can’t stand it here.” 

She laughs at that, a laugh that rumbles gently, like the tides at your feet, like something that you always want to draw close (like something that will always draw away). You almost stick your elbow into her to get her to stop – but you think if you start, you might end up too tangled up in each other. You realise then, with her fingers curled around your hand and her lips close enough to drink again, that you want to kiss her laughter off her mouth.

You lean in.

“That’s not the problem, though,” you begin.

“No?”

“No. See I think if I stay longer, I might start loving it.”

She leans in to speak slowly and quietly into your ear.

“Do you want that, Katara?” 

How do you answer that? You look at her under the light of the moon and stars and boardwalk illuminations, in a light that is pink and purple and silver and neon and twinkling and waning and fading, all at once. You don’t need to wonder for long about what it is that you want, with a girl who is as constant and fickle as the tide and has her fingers wrapped in yours and her breath at your ear.

It’s you, who leans in first.

(It’s her, who keeps leaning in)

But it’s you, who draws away first. And it’s her, with bright blue on the corner of her mouth, smudged up with her lip balm, grinning.

“Will I ever see you again?” you ask her.

“Maybe,” she teases, as she moves in closer for another quick kiss. You let her steal just one. “If you follow the wind.”

“I’ll follow the tides. I’ll follow the moon.”

She squeezes your hands. “I hope I find you somewhere where there’s more yellow. There’s not enough yellow here.”

You wrinkle your nose. “There’s too much gold, if you ask me.”

“That’s  _ not  _ yellow.”

“It’s basically yellow.”

“No it’s  _ not. _ ”

She splashes you with a handful of water. A mistake.

You chase her along the shore, laughing, until you catch her and she scoops you up into your arms and you kiss her and mumble about dreams and nightmares and silly things until the sun begins to smudge upwards, and the sky changes again. 

You don’t know if you’ll see her again.

* * *

You cry the day you leave the island behind.

But first, you meditate with Aang, as the sun rises, before it all pours out.

It was only a rickety-tram ride away. One that weaves past shabby concrete blocks and cheap lights and crossed wires and veers over into lush gardens and wide terraces and gold trims – and then back again, and the city is cut up like a jigsaw, into rich and poor, into stolen treasures and boarded up cheap casinos filled with rusting slot machines (outlawed just half a year before she came – though you feel the holes burning in people’s pockets all the same), and she can’t make sense of the mess. The temple sits above that, its stone up high on the mountain slopes being much older than any grand villa or demented reconstruction project, and it felt like it wasn’t part of the city at all, at first. Its gardens weren’t ornaments, botanical luxuries to admire: there was room to breathe and water and earth beneath her feet in a way that felt both real and free – all four elements, all four nations, could find space here. You’d thought it a retreat, and had resided here, amongst all-too-solemn sages, until suddenly there was no space at all. 

It’s then, you move, quite suddenly, away from the Avatar and into a spare room crammed above a tea house, where you can hear as many tropical birds as bus horns. You realise you were right and wrong. There’s something warm, something bright, a spark that’s crushed under the weight of this place. You see pieces of it. You see a harried, hard-knuckled mother cut pieces of fruit for her daughter’s friend who has no home to go to. You see a slump of teenage boys try and drag in this cheap, pawn-shop stereo system into a community theatre for an underground party where a girl might leave glitter kisses on your cheek. You see how carefully Zuko’s uncle pours tea and how carelessly he counts change. 

“Do you think things will ever really be different here?” you ask.

You sit with the sun at your back, near the shade, and a sharp wind. Aang is nursing a gentle flame in his fingertips, which crinkles out and in as he breathes (out and in). For once, the light doesn’t feel oppressive. 

“Yeah,” he says, after a while. “I mean, things can always change. I think some things have  _ already  _ changed. I think the Fire Nation can be really different, in its own way.”

“I’m not asking if they  _ can.  _ I’m asking if they  _ will. _ ”

There’s a long moment of quiet, where all you can hear is the wind as the world breathes.

You start thinking. You’ve spent the past few months pouring soup. That’s the main thing. Then you moved onto cooking it, chopping up fresh veggies, while you sang melodies that your grandmother taught you about lean winters and long nights and crossing the ocean by yourself, at the age of sixteen, to people washing pots and pans and cutting up fresh chillies and grinding mustard seed. You taught them some of these songs: they taught you some poetry, most of which fell out of your ear, but some of it – especially the ones about resistance, about holding on, about grasping to life with white knuckles and not letting go, those stuck. You wrote pamphlets. You coordinate with the local community theatre as when you could hand out your soup and your pamphlets. You feed people who need to be fed. You wonder how they’ll fill that space when you’re gone. You keep wondering, and thinking, which is the opposite of what you should be doing when you’re meditating, but it’s got its claws into you. The Fire Nation.

Aang opens his eyes.

“Okay, then.”

It’s a promise.

You cry then. You cry and hold him in your arms and tell him you’ll miss him just as he tells you that he’s proud of you.

You cry the day you leave the Fire Nation behind.

* * *

When you see her again, it isn’t in the Fire Nation, or the Earth Kingdom. It’s on an island swimming in storm-grey seas and jagged coastlines and bristling with forests of pine green that turn white in the winter. The skies aren't blue here, like the magazines: they’re white and they’re grey and they’re black and sometimes amber, and sometimes this gentle pink when the sun sets.

There’s not much yellow. So you bring her flowers. They’re orchids and they’re  _ golden _ . 

She doesn’t like that, much. But not enough to stop kissing you.

When you kiss her again, her face is painted ghost-white, but her lips are blood red. You think it’s funny that this time she’s in costume, and you tell her this, and she laughs. 

She leans in first. She keeps leaning in. 

She doesn’t let go, this time, not until the tides begin to pull you back home.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you! <3
> 
> hopefully you enjoyed this one! let me know what you thought in the comments :^)
> 
> You can find me at [zuzuslastbraincell](https://zuzuslastbraincell.tumblr.com/) | [Winter ATLA Femslash Week](https://winter-atla-femslash.tumblr.com)


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